Miss Fortune

by Brandi Dougherty

  “Now, let’s see what the cards can tell us, shall we?” said the woman, her face bathed in candlelight. She rested a pair of thick-rimmed glasses on her nose and shifted a deck of cards between her hands. The cards seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Zoe stood directly over Serafina’s right shoulder. She made a face at Mia and giggled.

  “Maybe she’ll tell you who you’re gonna have for math next year, Mia.” Zoe giggled again. She couldn’t seem to stop laughing now — it all seemed so silly.

  Serafina narrowed her catlike eyes over her glasses and stared back at Zoe for a long breath.

  Mia watched the woman’s expression. “Zoe, shhhhh.”

  “What?” Zoe asked innocently. “You don’t like math…. It was a joke.” Zoe wondered why Mia was taking this so seriously. The woman was obviously a fake. Everything about the tent seemed like it was set up as an act. Well, everything except that weird snake head, Zoe thought as she noticed a mounted snake head with outstretched jaws nestled on a piece of red satin in the corner of the tent. A small, ominous-looking bottle of liquid was propped between the snake’s jaws. The snake didn’t look fake. In fact, it looked pretty real. And creepy.

  “Have you had your cards read before?” The woman ignored Zoe and focused on Mia.

  “Um, no,” Mia replied quietly.

  “Well, I come from a long line of Italian fortunetellers,” said Serafina. “You will not be disappointed. Let’s begin.”

  Serafina slowly laid a tarot card on the table with her long, bony fingers. After a minute of silence, she began.

  “You will start a new journey soon,” she said to Mia in a low voice.

  “Yeah, seventh grade,” Zoe mumbled under her breath. This time the woman turned all the way around in her chair and shot Zoe a glare. As soon as their eyes met, Zoe felt her insides turn to ice. The uneasy feeling she’d had outside the tent came flooding back. At first the woman had seemed nice and friendly enough, but when she glared at Zoe, there was something scary about her eyes. It was almost as though she was looking straight into Zoe and reading her thoughts. Zoe decided to stop joking around.

  Serafina turned her attention back to Mia and placed another card on the table. “This journey, while not easy, will reap long-term happiness.” She smiled warmly at Mia, and Zoe could see Mia relax a little in her chair.

  Serafina tapped her bloodred fingernail on the next card she put down. “Your passion in life will serve you well.”

  Mia beamed. “I want to be a dancer!”

  The woman returned Mia’s smile and nodded. “And you shall.”

  At the end of the fortune, the woman handed Mia a small coin with a pyramid on it.

  “This, dear, shall seal your fortune,” she told Mia as she placed the coin in her palm and folded Mia’s fingers over it. “Always carry it with you.”

  “Thanks!” Mia said brightly. “Looks like it’s gonna be a good year. Your turn, Zoe!”

  Serafina turned again in her chair and watched intently as Zoe made her way around the table to the other waiting chair. Zoe handed Mia her stuffed bear, hurried to the chair, and sat. She was excited to hear her fortune now that Mia’s had been so fun.

  The woman cleared her throat and set the first card down.

  “Hmmm,” she said as a small smile crept onto the edge of her thin lips. “It appears that you will make a bad decision.”

  “Uh, okay.” Zoe laughed nervously.

  “Zoe, be serious.” Mia poked her in the back.

  The woman placed another card down and shook her head slightly. “This decision may lead to some regrettable events.”

  “Hey!” Zoe interrupted. She wasn’t feeling so excited anymore. “Mia’s fortune was way better!”

  Serafina took off her glasses and set them on the table. “Excuse me?” she said slowly.

  “Zoe …” Mia started.

  Zoe’s pulse quickened a little as Serafina stared at her, but she continued, anyway. “Mia’s was way better. How come mine is just bad stuff?”

  “Do you think I’m just making this up?” The woman flicked her hand in the air and her voice rose with irritation.

  “Well, I just …” Zoe stumbled. “Why can’t mine be good, too?”

  Serafina let a long slow breath escape from her lips. It sounded like the air leaking out of a bike tire, or a snake hissing. “Would you like me to finish or not?”

  “I guess so,” Zoe said, though she wasn’t sure she really did want her to continue.

  The woman quickly placed the next card on the table. This time a dark look crossed her face.

  “It seems as though you may be in some danger.”

  “Oh no, Zoe!” Mia gasped.

  Zoe shifted awkwardly in her chair. Now she really wanted to get out of the tent, but she waited for Serafina to finish.

  The woman sat perfectly still and continued to stare at the cards on the table. Zoe waited tensely for her to speak. After another minute of silence, Zoe cleared her throat. “Um, is that it?” she asked tentatively.

  Serafina suddenly lifted her gaze and locked eyes with Zoe. Zoe’s pulse sped as she waited for the woman to say something, but she just stared straight through Zoe with the same glassy expression.

  “Zoe, I think we should go,” Mia whispered nervously, hugging Zoe’s bear to her chest.

  Zoe nodded, her voice caught in her throat. Serafina’s behavior wasn’t making any sense, and Zoe was starting to think that the woman’s act was more creepy than funny. Zoe moved to get up when suddenly Serafina stood and walked abruptly to Zoe’s side of the table. She faced Zoe, her catlike eyes piercing right through her. Zoe stood up slowly and felt the space of the tent tighten around her. She felt dizzy. Why was the woman acting so weird?

  “I must give you something to seal your fortune,” Serafina finally said in a monotone voice, a creepy smile edging her lips again. She raised her hands and closed her fingers around the leather cord of the necklace she was wearing. She held the necklace out in front of her and moved to place it around Zoe’s neck with a robotic motion. Zoe froze.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, wide-eyed. A weird feeling came over Zoe. Her arms and legs felt heavy. She had no choice but to let Serafina put the necklace around her neck.

  “I am bestowing the power of the snake eye on you,” Serafina replied mechanically as she waved her left hand in front of the necklace. “Il potere dell’occhio di serpente … Il potere dell’occhio di serpente … Il potere dell’occhio di serpente.”

  All the color drained from Zoe’s face. What was with the creepy chanting? Zoe wasn’t sure, but she thought the woman might have been speaking Italian. She glanced at Mia. Her face was an ashy gray color. Mia looked terrified.

  “I … I can’t take this,” Zoe said with a shake of her head. She reached up to remove the necklace, but Serafina’s hand shot out to stop her.

  “You have no choice,” the woman said eerily. “The snake eye has chosen. It is yours.”

  “Zoe, we’d better go before your dad gets worried.” Mia shifted nervously from one foot to the other. She had her hand on the opening of the tent and was already stepping outside.

  Zoe could hear the tension in Mia’s voice. “Yeah, okay.” She backed away from the woman and took a wide step around her to get to the opening of the tent.

  Once Zoe was outside, she took a deep breath. The air was surprisingly cold, but Zoe felt like she could finally breathe again. She looked down at the necklace. The tarnished silver pendant looked like a tightly coiled snake that had formed the shape of an eye. In the center of the eye sat a large red jewel. The necklace looked very old and seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. Zoe could feel the weight of it around her neck. The snake on the necklace was a little disturbing, but there was something about it that she liked. She touched the stone with her finger and felt her whole body grow warm.

  She turned to look at the tent, wondering if she should try again to give the necklace back — even though for some weird reason
she wanted to keep it. Serafina was standing in the opening with the flicker of candlelight around her. The shadows on the tent behind her looked like giant flames on the wall.

  Suddenly, Serafina called out to Zoe. “Good luck,” she said in the same deep, monotone voice. Then she threw her head back and laughed. The sound was evil and earsplitting.

  A serious chill zinged down Zoe’s spine. The candles made it look like the woman’s eyes were glowing like firelight, too. Zoe turned and ran toward her dad’s car. Mia was already waiting inside.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mia returned to Zoe’s bedroom after brushing her teeth. “So I want to hear more about … Zoe … Zoe?”

  Zoe jumped out of the closet next to the bedroom door. “BOO!”

  “Baaaahhhh!” Mia stumbled backward, clutching her toothbrush to her chest.

  Zoe fell onto the bed, laughing.

  “Zoe, you totally scared me half to death!”

  “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

  Zoe’s window creaked, making her jump this time. The old Victorian house she’d lived in her entire life seemed to make more noise each year. The floorboards groaned and the windows creaked constantly. She walked over to her bedroom window and looked outside. There were strange patches of mist dotting the grass and street below, and an odd chill was in the air. Nights in Portland in the middle of August were usually much warmer. Zoe shuddered. She quickly drew the window closed, locked it, and pulled the curtains tightly together. After the whole fortune-telling incident, she felt a little more on edge than she cared to admit. Zoe was hardly ever scared, and she was determined to prove to herself that her uneasy feeling was just a figment of her own imagination.

  Zoe ran back to her bed and tucked her feet under the comforter. She arranged a stack of pillows in the middle of the bed, took a flashlight out of her nightstand, and clicked off the lamp next to her. “Come on, let’s tell ghost stories!”

  Zoe and Mia spent at least two nights a week at each other’s houses in the summertime and telling scary stories was part of their sleepover ritual. Plus, Zoe wanted to distract herself from thinking about the woman from the carnival.

  “I’m already scared enough, thanks,” Mia said. “Between your creepy fortune and you jumping out at me, I’m done!”

  “Yeah, that was pretty weird,” Zoe admitted. “I think Serafina made my fortune creepy on purpose because she got annoyed by my jokes.” Zoe wanted to put the woman out of her mind, but it was hard to do with the heavy pendant hanging around her neck as a constant reminder. She had thought about taking it off as soon as they got home, but for some reason she couldn’t explain or understand, she had decided to keep it on. Zoe wasn’t much of a jewelry person, unless it was a leather cuff bracelet or a funky plastic ring. She didn’t even have her ears pierced. But there was something about the necklace that made removing it seem wrong somehow. She was too weirded out by the whole thing to tell Mia. The best thing she could think to do was to remind herself that spells and trances and ghosts were all … well, stories — as in fiction.

  “So … ghost stories?” Zoe urged again.

  Mia traced the red abstract flower pattern on Zoe’s comforter with her finger. “Okay, fine,” she finally agreed with a halfhearted sigh. “You go first.”

  Zoe grinned and turned the flashlight beam on her chin, illuminating the freckles dotting her cheeks and making her face look distorted in the shadows.

  “Okay. One night a young couple was driving home from the movies. It was pitch-black outside — there wasn’t even any moonlight in the sky. Just as they got to an old country road, their car broke down.”

  “Oh, good one,” Mia said approvingly.

  “The man decided he would walk back toward the main road to a house they had seen and ask for help. He thought the woman should stay in the car. If anyone drove by, she could flag them down.”

  “Oh, it’s never a good idea to split up!” Mia exclaimed with a shake of her head.

  “So the man kissed the woman and set off for the house,” Zoe continued. “The woman sat in the car in the dark and waited. She turned the dial on the stereo, hoping to get a radio station, but it was all static … until a voice came through the radio and said, ‘Beware! Beware!’ Just then, the woman turned and looked out the window. There was a …”

  Suddenly, there was a loud scratching sound against Zoe’s bedroom window.

  “AHHHHH!” Mia and Zoe screamed in unison.

  “Did you hear that?” Mia asked, her voice shaking.

  “Yes! Why else would I have screamed?” Zoe whispered. “What was it?”

  They heard the scratching again.

  Mia gripped Zoe’s arm. “Go look.”

  Zoe gripped back, her heart racing. The image of Serafina’s translucent eyes popped into her head. “YOU go look.”

  Zoe clicked on the bedside lamp, and the girls sat rigid on the bed listening for another sound. And then it came.

  Zoe held her breath, shot up from the bed, ran to the window, and flung back the curtain. Both girls screamed again. Then Zoe laughed.

  “It’s just a tree branch,” she said.

  Mia fell back on Zoe’s bed and laughed with relief.

  “I see Wendell on the lawn, though,” Zoe said. “I’m going to go let him in.”

  Zoe walked slowly down the stairs to the front door to let her giant brown tabby cat, Wendell, inside. She took deep breaths, trying to calm herself. She hated to admit how scared she had been. Of course it was just a tree branch, she told herself. There’s no such thing as ghosts, right? But as Zoe opened the front door and watched Wendell scoot past her and into the kitchen, she couldn’t help but notice that the air was completely still — cold and still. What could have moved the tree branch against the window if there was no wind?

  Zoe shuddered again and locked and bolted the door before running back upstairs to her room. Mia was already snuggled up in Zoe’s summer camp sleeping bag, looking sleepy and content. Mia was usually the one who got really freaked out by creaky noises in the night, especially in Zoe’s old house, while Zoe had always thought of herself as the more reasonable one. But tonight Zoe felt like a real scaredy-cat.

  Zoe got in bed and reached over to turn off the lamp when she remembered the necklace. She looked down at the red stone and the ugly coiled snake and shook her head. I shouldn’t be wearing this thing anymore, she thought. She sat up in bed and moved to take the necklace off, but something stopped her hands. It was like an invisible force surrounded the necklace and made it impossible for Zoe to remove it. Zoe felt clammy and light-headed. She looked over at Mia, but she was already fast asleep. Zoe’s fingers were frozen in the air, unable to close themselves around the cord of the necklace. This can’t be happening. I must be so tired I’m just imagining things now. Zoe moved her hands away from the necklace. She quickly reached over to the lamp instead and turned it off. She pulled the covers up to her chin and tried to think about sleep and Noah and the Ferris wheel ride — anything but the necklace.

  That night, Zoe tossed and turned. She had crazy dreams about the carnival and the Great Serafina. She dreamed Serafina was chasing her through the fun house holding a snake. Then she dreamed she was on the Ferris wheel with Noah. Suddenly, Serafina appeared in their car out of nowhere and tipped Noah out! Then Zoe had another dream in which Serafina was sitting on the branch of the tree outside her bedroom window. Her eyes were the red jewels of the pendant, and she kept chanting “Good luck, good luck,” in that eerie monotone voice as the branch scraped against the glass.

  The next morning, Zoe felt like she hadn’t slept at all. The dreams played back through her head like a bad movie. She looked down at the necklace and hesitantly reached up to touch it. Her hand closed effortlessly around the pendant. Okay, I must have just been really tired last night, she thought. Now that Zoe realized she could take the necklace off if she wanted to, it didn’t seem like such a big deal. Instead, she shoved the pendant under her T-shirt. Then sh
e nudged Mia.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead.”

  Mia groaned and slowly sat up.

  “How’d you sleep?” Zoe asked.

  “Like a rock!” Mia replied.

  Zoe wished she could say the same.

  Mia stood up and stretched. “I’m starving!”

  Zoe laughed. “Let’s go see what we can find.”

  The girls went downstairs and found a note on the kitchen table from Zoe’s dad. The note was taped to a box of doughnuts.

  Dear lovely ladies,

  I regret to inform you that I’ve been called away to important business at the farmers’ market. I have to pick up some shrubs for my new landscaping job. I hope you understand. To help ease the pain of my absence, I’ve left you a highly nutritional health food breakfast to enjoy. (Mia: Don’t tell your mom.) See you in a bit. Love, Dad

  “Your dad is the best,” Mia said.

  Zoe arranged the doughnuts on a plate and led the way to the living room. Zoe’s older brother, Conner, was at basketball camp, so they had the whole house to themselves.

  “He sure tries.” Zoe smiled. Zoe’s parents had gotten divorced when she had been in first grade. Her mom had taken a job teaching history at a small college in British Columbia, and Zoe and Conner had stayed with their dad in Portland because their mom worked really long hours and was writing an important history book in her spare time. Zoe only saw her mom a couple of times a year. Now her mom was remarried, and Zoe felt like the more time passed, the less her mom was in her life in any real kind of way. She couldn’t imagine telling her mom about Noah or her film class, or anything that she really cared about. Those were things she told her dad. And she knew how hard he tried to be both parents at once.

  Zoe and Mia settled on the couch and each grabbed a doughnut.

  “So, we still haven’t talked about what happened with Noah on the Ferris wheel last night,” Mia said between bites. “I’m dying to hear the whole story!”

  Zoe set down her doughnut so she could focus. “So, I told him I was glad he came,” Zoe began.